I hope everyone had a great Christmas Day and New Years! Â
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I decided to embark on a new project this week inspired by the project that I did for Mrs Flying WoodShop's Christmas present (pictured below).

 I'm nearing completion of a large version of the same Celtic cross above.  Again, I'm carving in poplar and I'm doing this [almost] entirely by hand.  On this one, I used the band saw to cut the shape of the cross and then the disk and belt sander to clean up the edges.  I also used the router to bring down the level of the circle behind the cross (this circle is called a nimbus or a halo and symbolizes sanctity or holiness) before carving the smaller Celtic knots.

This is a picture of the cross as it is today. Â I've been working on it for a couple of days and should finish it up tomorrow. Â I was trying to figure out whether I would stain it or do the torch treatment. Â I did a test piece with stain and it looked just okay. Â I think I'll do a very light torching to bring out the contrast in levels before applying the clear polyurethane finish. Â
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For those interested in the carving tools I've been using, you can see several in the photo.  The red-handled tools are little files that I got on Amazon.  They came in a pack of 10 of various shapes and I think it ran me about $8 for the set.  I'm very happy with those.  I've also been using straight bench chisels, but the vast majority of the work has been done using the carving chisels/gouges that I built the stand for (bottom right of the photo).
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Thanks for reading and I'll post more as the project progresses.
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